21 March 2012 12:15 PM

Laying the groundwork for the Toulouse massacre

When the Toulouse school massacre happened, the media rushed to say that the perpetrator was a white far-right racist. The lone gunman had mown down at close range a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, wounding several others. He was thought to be the same killer who a few days earlier had murdered three black French paratroopers in two separate attacks. A killer who targeted Jews and blacks – must be a far-right white racist, right?

Wrong. The suspect who the French police have now cornered turns out to be a jihadi Islamic terrorist with self-declared links to al Qaeda, who has made trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the past. Well, there’s a surprise.

Jews throughout the world are all potential targets for attack in a terrifying manifestation of global incitement to murder. Islamists regularly declare their intention to kill Jews wherever they can find them. Hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza at southern Israel over the past couple of weeks bear out daily the frenzied attempt to murder as many Jews as possible. In the Mumbai massacre in 2008, it turned out that the attack on the tiny ultra-orthodox Lubavitch centre was for the Islamic perpetrators of that atrocity the most important target. There have been repeated Islamic terrorist attempts on Jewish targets around the world. Oh -- and Islamists have been murdering black people in Libya because they are black.

Yet all this is ignored by the mainstream media. Desperate to sanitise Muslim genocidal terrorism and prove that racism and Jew-hatred is confined to white people and the ‘far right’, the media simply did not entertain the possibility that the perpetrator of the French killings might have been a Muslim. So a range of likely perpetrators was canvassed – but they were all variations on white racists.

And even when the perpetrator turned out to be an Islamic terrorist the media were still trying to spin it away, with Sky News stressing the deprivation of the killer and his family and interviewing a French female journalist living in London who claimed that this was ‘an attack against diversity’. As blogger Edgar Davidson observed here:

‘She said that it was all down to the racist climate in France which had been made worse by Nikolas Sarkozy in the last five years and she picked out, as an example of racist lack of tolerance, the burka ban he had introduced.’

Not only are the media and ‘progressive’ commentators in the west desperate to sanitise Islamic terrorism and genocidal incitement; they also join in. The Toulouse jihadist said he was

‘seeking revenge for Palestinian children and French military postings overseas.’

But no Palestinian children have ever been targeted by Israel for murder. Quite the reverse: Israel regularly puts its own soldiers in harm’s way in order to any minimise civilian casualties in military operations against Palestinian terrorists and their infrastructure which it undertakes solely to protect its own people from further murderous Palestinian attacks. Any Palestinian child casualties in such operations occur solely as a tragic and inadvertent by-product of war – and as often as not because the Palestinians have put their own children in harm’s way.

Yet this deranged belief that the Israelis deliberately kill Palestinian children is not only pumped out daily by the Arab and Muslim world inciting their people to hate Jews and to murder them as a holy act; not only do western progressives ignore this incitement and pretend instead that Islamic terrorism arises from legitimate ‘grievances’; these same western progressives themselves pump out precisely the same lies and incitement -- and then suggest that the deliberate murder of Jewish innocents is the moral equivalent of attempts by Israel to prevent the slaughter of yet more innocents.

Thus the EU foreign affairs chief, the British Baroness Ashton, seemed to equate the murder of the French Jews in Toulouse with the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza in Israeli military operations there. Although the EU now claims she was misunderstood and that she was merely referring to all violence against children, that does not let her off the hook – indeed, by underscoring the fundamental amorality of the remark, it not only attaches Lady Ashton to that hook yet more firmly but also now attaches the EU itself. And now Hamas itself, no less, has sprung to her defence:

‘“Ashton’s declarations are worthy of appreciation and support due to Israel’s attempts to pressure her,” said a senior Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, on his Facebook page.’

‘No-one will ever know whether the tragedy in Toulouse would not have taken place if the atmosphere were different. But we can say that history teaches that mass demonisation can all too easily lead to the dehumanisation of the group or people or nation that is being demonised. From there it is only one single step to the belief that murder itself can be justified.’

The terrorist who carried out the French killings may now have been caught. But those in the west who provide an echo chamber for the diabolical discourse that incubates genocide have yet to be brought to account.

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This appears fro some reason as a "column" as well as a "blog". The latest reader's comment on the column helpfully provides quotes from Melanie Phillips on Breivik and on the killings in Toulouse.

On the question of how she can ignore the confluence of evidence and testimony from all sides pointing to Israel's wrongdoing - simple! it's all a genocidal anti-Semitic conspiracy. The only way to see through this conspiracy is to believe implicitly and exclusively what the IDF says.

On what Arno said, I think we can all feel the pain of the bereaved after such atrocity. The complaint here is that Melanie Phillips' disdain for "moral equivalence" allows her to sympathise with some while blithely dismissing the pain of others because she supports the cause of those doing the killing and readily accepts their explanation of why the killing is necessary - an explanation that does not bear impartial scrutiny.

Dear Melanie,
I can hardly understand how you are not outright angry. I am.

Last sunday my 15-year-old daughter had some homework to do. Some text excerpts about negative images that westeners and muslims have of each other served as the source material. I had to explain the words “islamism” and “islamist” to her. These people deliberately kill jews, they do it today, they do it here in the west, I told her among other things. On March 21st the murder of three jewish children in Toulouse came as no surprise to my daughter.

Those three children and their families deserve attention, compassion and thought before anyone else. I am angry for almost everybody focusses on some story or other related to perceived larger matters. What can possibly be larger than losing ones life? How can one ignore the lasting pain of parents who lost a child to murder?

Only days have gone by when Belgium mourned the tragic loss of 22 children in a traffic accident. A country stood silent for a minute, this time united as a nation that would otherwise be divided over language. Every child was remembered emotionally at the funeral by name and showing their faces.

Did France mourn? A country that would easily come to a standstill by a strike would continue as usual. Armed with nuclear weapons the country proved unable to protect three children. Silence there was, but only about the fact that the children’s bodies were flown out of the country to be buried in Israel. Is this the only place where at least their graves will be safe from attacks?

What does it feel like when young jewish children ask their parents wether or not it would be safe to go out an play or even go to school? I am sure they do ask. What does it feel like to answer the truth and admit to helplessness? Those are the questions to ask.
.

Some indication that you understand that the Breivik affair and the media reporting of it puncture your rhetoric here?

Some explanation how you can persist with the official Israeli line repeated by Netanyahu that Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and is in any case only acting to defend innocent Israeli civilians?

How do you screen out descriptions by senior IDF officers of strategic and tactical doctrine, and testimony by soldiers that confirms the implementation of what senior officers describe? How can you explain the independent and uncoordinated "lies" of Israeli soldiers, Israeli human rights groups, Palestinians, organisations and individuals, and international organisations, UN, Red Cross, governments etc. etc. that all converge on the same account of Israel's actions, that happens to fit the physical evidence, the film evidence, and the corpses? Is the most plausible explanation of such corroboration not that they describe what happened? How do you manage to screen out the long litany (reported in Israel as well as elsewhere) of attacks by Israeli soldiers and civilians on Palestinians, few of which reach court, few of which secure conviction, fewer still receive an appropriate sentence, fewer still serve even part of the sentence (including soldiers who are punished and promoted)? How do you manage to blank out the record (readily available) of all the children killed by Israel, and the cause of death? How can you dismiss all of this with Netanyahu-esque regret over collateral damage?

And as for Israel simply defending innocents - much like the US in the 18th and 19th centuries defending poor defenceless innocent white folk trying to go about their lives peacably against marauding savage "red indians".

Some sign that you understand that Israel's case should be made honestly and accurately, and that anything less is a blot on journalism?

"Sky News stressing the deprivation of the killer" - He was "frustrated," right? A magic progressivist word that does miracles. Hamas throw rockets on Israel? What else can they do being so frustrated? A scumbag raping a woman? A lot of frustration in his childhood. A murderer and a paedophile? Both have experienced a lot of frustration. But the word - and the concept - is particularly useful to excuse the Muslims, because then the Progressivists achieve two things at the price of one: kick the Zionists and the Christians, while promoting the Islamists, their allies in the war against the freedom and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, both of which constitute the bedrock of Western Civilisation.

I must admit that I also at first thought it was a Racist Nazi type who was killing the Black and Jewish French citizens.

My mind did not think that a Muslim would kill his own kind. Very silly really with daily bombs going off in "muslim" countries where they kill thousands of their own people every year.

In Norway , I did think it was not a Muslim from the start who set of the bomb and killed the children because Norway is so friendly to the the Palestine cause. I did not think that a Muslim would commit this crime in such a helpful place to thier cause.

I have only seen one comment and that was from the Prime Minister of Palestine who almost said not in my name.

We do not seem to hear from all those "wonderful people" who march around the world shouting "Not in my Name".

"Any Palestinian child casualties occur solely as a tragic by-product of war" says Melanie. Yeah right. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem 252 Palestinian children under 16 were killed during "Operation Cast Lead" alone. 252 - think about that number and of course there have been many more Palestinian children killed by Israel before and since.

When I first heard of the attacks on the Jewish children I thought immediately that it was a Muslim Extremist attack. Then I heard about the attack on the French soldiers and I was less certain about that. The first possibility, I thought it could be Neo-Nazis or second, an Islamic fundamentalist, who objected to Muslims serving in the ranks of the French Army. It would appear that I am right. What is truly amazing is that this second possibility was never discussed by the MSM, which truly speaks volumes about political bias and also misconduct by journalists.

Sarkozy has definitely played the race card as the polls indicated he was likely to lose the Presidency. That does not mean that he caused the massacre of the Jewish people in Toulouse but he has, by all accounts, contributed to a heightening of racial tension. He deserves condmenation for that.

Good point Mel, last night the MSM were assuring us it was some Knights Templar types who perpetrated these attacks. Now that it has turned out to be a 'left wing' extremist, they are all rather quiet.

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